Chees-us! Gas made from cheese wastage is set to heat homes across Cumbria

Hundreds of homes will be heated with biogas produced from cheddar wastage and water

This is cheese-ius! Hundreds of homes in Cumbria will be heated using cheese from the start of May 2016.

No, you are not in a delicious gooey-camembert induced hallucination, you heard us right!

The new government-backed energy plan will produce gas from cheddar cheese waste in order to heat up homes for hundreds of people.

The Lake District Creamery in Aspatria plans to turn whey and other residues left over from the cheese production process into biogas – a gas produced by breaking down organic matter without the use of oxygen.

The gas is produced by pumping liquid whey left over from the cheese making with water. Bacteria then feeds on the fats and sugars in the cheese for the next 7 weeks to produce the biogas.

Some of the product gas will be used to generate electricity for the plant itself, making this a super green process, whilst the rest will be fed into the local gas grid and be distributed amongst hundreds of homes.

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The plant is owned by a company called Clearfleau that plans to feed 4,000 homes annually with the cheesy gas.

The project will be subsidised by the Government as part of a scheme that will reward homes and companies who make renewable energy in a bid to decrease the country’s emissions and meet EU regulated renewable energy targets.

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Investors will benefit financially as the Government will issue ‘gold stars’ for their help. For example, Lake District Biogas is funding the up-front costs and is expected to receive about £2 million per year in subsidies for the next two decades.

So it is a win-win for us: the more we gobble cheese, the more residues there are to produce renewable energy. Gromit, this sounds great.